Traditional activities based tracking solutions of mobile workers have been focused on improving safety via automated on-site presence and location detection, or on cost reduction via business process automation by collecting on-site worker time. Moreover, product and solutions that addressed worker activities on a job site to efficiently provide task based tracking required dependency on mobile applications to enter and collect user activities.
While each category of these solutions are critically important to the success of any business, the focal point has remained heavily dependent on expensive approach that either required equipping individual worker with a smartphone or building and maintaining a proprietary network of connected devices, network nodes and gateways (such as RFID meshed network) despite major advancement in the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and connectivity.
Moreover, the proliferation of IoT networks such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), WiFi, Zigbee, etc. has led to more efficient solutions for connected world in home, vehicle and business automation. Nonetheless, most of these solutions are focused on data collection such as telemetry or device interaction typically via a traditional mobile device such as smartphone, tablet or laptop.
Additionally, existing methods and systems for interacting from an IoT smart device to a connected device such as smartphone are limited to broadcasting the device information in order to communicate specific activities or proximity. In more recent effort, there have been a lots of IoT devices enabling the holder to communicate to nearby mobile device or the cloud a specific activity. For example, we recently saw the introduction of many keyfob devices that can send a message over BLE to nearby mobile device to activate a buzzer for finding the lost device. In other scenarios, the BLE keyfob can vibrate when the user moves away from her phone. In similar scenario, the keyfob is used to broadcast an emergency message with the click of a button to nearby mobile devices or to the cloud.
Our invention extends the current capability of these IoT devices to overcome the limitation of current solutions to provide efficient business automation for mobile workers. The invention describes methods for providing accurate personnel activity tracking by delivering relevant activity context in advertised data to nearby mobile device or network gateway. In this model, both the IoT wearable device and the scanner are equipped with standard network technology such as BLE as a transmitter and receiver respectively. The wearable device for the purpose of providing an example of implementation to the reader is depicted as a smart keyfob providing one or more buttons and led lights for user interaction, and implements standard BLE beacon advertisement model using iBeacon specification; while the receiver is a standard smartphone supporting BLE 4.0+ such as an iPhone 6.